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I have a Kenmore Elite 665.14815N611 that is leaking randomly from the bottom left of the door here.

front door

I thought it was the water level switch where the inside was filling up too much. Took it apart, cleaned the inside with a pipe cleaner (there wasn't anything obvious impeding it) and put it back together. Also checked the microswitch and there was continuity there.

Level switch

I looked at the vertical seal around the door, but I do not think that these items are the issue.

side seals

Continuing my research, it appears that the lower plastic piece is called a seal, but it does not have any soft gaskets that I would consider a seal. Link for reference.

lower seal

I also took a picture of the "seal" from the inside of the dishwasher, and I cannot figure out how it actually seals. (Sorry that it is nasty, I had no idea.)

inside seal

I also see that the inside of the bottom door seal is nasty. I wonder if this could be the source of my stinking dishwasher.

nasty seal

It's Sunday and everything is closed at this point. So here's my plan.

  1. Take the seal off and clean it and reinstall it.
  2. Check for cracked arms for potential incorrect spraying (I doubt that it is this since the leaking is intermittent.)
  3. Run the dishwasher with the front panel off to see if I can understand the leak further.

Feedback is appreciated on my plan here. Or if I should just replace the seal and be done with it.

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  • When you run it with the door open tie down the spinner arms or you will get a bath! That seal is leaking whether it has a crack or not. Can you do the dollar bill trick on the gasket to be sure it is actually sealing. It is possible the door got bumped and is slightly misaligned.
    – Gil
    Commented Aug 8, 2021 at 21:10
  • I'm not familiar with the dollar bill trick. How is that done? Also, I'm not running the dishwasher with the door opened just the door apart to see how high the water level gets inside the unit.
    – JoeFletch
    Commented Aug 9, 2021 at 2:23
  • It is the same as on a refrigerator, you close the door on a dollar bill and see if it is held in place, if not you have a potential leak. You do this around the whole gasket.
    – Gil
    Commented Aug 9, 2021 at 16:10
  • The problem is that it is leaking from the bottom. Not too sure how I could test the bottom seal with this method.
    – JoeFletch
    Commented Aug 12, 2021 at 22:32
  • How old is the dishwasher, if it is more then about 8 maybe the best thing would be to replace it. You can try clean up the bottom where the seal adheards to and replace the seal.
    – Gil
    Commented Aug 13, 2021 at 17:21

1 Answer 1

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After close to 30 days and many uses of the dishwasher, it appears that taking the door apart and cleaning the inside has resolved this issue.

I took off the door, removed the following.

  • insulation (this and this)
  • lower door seal
  • the following part, which I cannot find on any of the drawings; could be a splash guard of sorts. But I am not convinced that this does anything to regards to keep water inside.splash guard

So I think what was happening is that the lower door seal was so dirty and clogged up that water would accumulate on the outside of the door seal during the fill cycle. This section would continue to fill and not drain back into the dishwasher. I took it all apart and cleaned it as best as I could, put it back together and ran it on a quick rinse cycle with the door off to see how far it would fill up. It did not fill up that far. I hope that was it, but I will post back here if that fixes it.

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